So, I have been seeing several ideas on Pinterest and I have been trying to decide how to use them in my speech room. Introducing, the sentence expanding activity!
First, I used my new favorite therapy tool, my McDonald's french fries containers. I wrote several “subjects” and “predicates” on Popsicle sticks. I introduced that all complete sentences must have a subject and a predicate. My students got to select a “french fry” and place it in the correct container.
Then I took out all the pieces, and the students worked together to make matches to make sentences. Then I prompted my students, were these sentences exciting?! They agreed that they weren't! I then introduced the sentence expanding visual. I showed them how by adding adjectives, adverbs, and prepositional phrases make the sentences more exciting and tells the reader more information. They got to practice expanding their sentences with my sample subject/predicate only sentences.